Inevitable and Only Page 2

  “Grendel, see if Ross is upstairs, and tell him that his daughter is here.”

  Cassandra never speaks to humans. She directs all her comments to whichever cat is nearest. If none of the cats are around, she simply doesn’t answer you. This makes her a less-than-ideal bookshop assistant, as I’ve pointed out to Dad many times. He always sighs and tells me that he understands how hard it is to find work in grad school, and he appreciates her valuable literary expertise. Dad is a very nice guy.

  I wondered what Cassandra would think of me if she knew what I’d done. The thought made me shudder, and I swallowed hard, ducked my head, and scurried upstairs to find Dad myself.

  He was in his office on the second floor. The room had once been a bedroom with an adjoining bath. Now he kept books piled up in the claw-foot bathtub, and filing cabinets lined the walls, topped with even more books. His desk was cluttered with random things like quill pens, bottles of ink, some dead plants. Two more bookstore cats, Hieronymus and Bosch, were curled up in a basket near the door. They looked up when I entered, but I had to say “Dad!” twice before he lifted his eyes from his paperwork and noticed that I was standing in the doorway.

  “Cadie!” he said. “To what do I owe this pleasure, meine Tochter?”

  I crossed the small room and kissed him on the top of his curly mop of hair, tugging his ponytail. “Still sorting through the Goethe?”

  “The complete works, my dear,” he said, in his best Sleazy Car Salesman Voice. “Thirteen leather-bound, kissably intact volumes.”

  “Ew, Dad. No one wants to kiss dead cows.”

  “From 1902, did I mention?”

  “Let’s see,” I mused, squinting into the distance and pretending to search my memory. “I believe you may have said something about it. At dinner two weeks ago? The day you bid on the set? Every five minutes since then?”

  Dad stopped shuffling his papers and grinned at me. “So, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “They announced the winter play in Meeting today!”

  Dad looked at the books piled on his desk. “Faust?”

  “No, and stop thinking about cow skin.” I cleared my throat. “Ahem. Dramatic pause.”

  “Dramatic pause,” Dad agreed. “So? What is it?”

  I did a little flourish with one hand. “Much Ado About Nothing!”

  “Well, how about that!” Weatherman Voice, because he was too excited to be anything but genuine.

  I grinned back. “I know, right? It’s like it was meant to be, after we just saw it last week!”

  Dad laughed. “Well, Watson, as a former professor-in-training, I’d have to say that no, it’s probably not a coincidence—I’d bet your teachers planned it this way, so they can tie in a field trip to the Shakespeare Theatre. At any rate, that means you’re already one step ahead of the game. As your mother would say.” He stood and pushed his chair back, scattering Hieronymus and Bosch. “When are the auditions?”

  “Next Monday.”

  “Less than a week! ‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,’” Dad cried. Shakespearean Tragic Voice, one of my favorites, because it usually signaled the onset of a one-man mimed sword fight, ending in grisly death.

  Today, though, Dad sat back down and said, “I have a bit more work to do. Are you meeting Mom and Josh at Peabody?” Mom was concerned that Josh’s teacher wasn’t pushing him hard enough, so she’d started observing his lessons.

  “I guess so.” I checked my watch. “His lesson is probably just about over.”

  “‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’” Dad droned in Bored Student Voice.

  “Oh come on, Dad, you can do better than that.” I picked up my backpack from where I’d dropped it by the door. “See you in a bit?”

  He nodded. “I should be home in an hour or so.”

  “I’ll start dinner.”

  “Thanks, well-trained offspring.”

  I headed downstairs, waved to Cassandra (who didn’t wave back, shocker), and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Peabody Conservatory, where Josh took lessons in the Preparatory division, was just a couple blocks from the bookstore. I passed the Washington Monument, surrounded by cobblestones—it’s a smaller replica of the famous one in DC—and climbed the marble steps to the conservatory entrance.

  As I sat down on a bench, I caught my reflection in the glass door. I wished I looked like Dad, but Josh was the one who had inherited the curly strawberry-blond hair, the freckles, the blue eyes. My skin was a warm bronze, even in winter, like Mom’s. I had her round nose, her thick eyebrows, and my hair was the same shade of espresso as hers. Although I’d done my best to change that: strands of pink, powder blue, and violet whipped across my face in the breeze.

  That’s one of the great things about hippie parents and Quaker school. No one cares if you dye your hair crazy colors, or if you show up in red Converse sneakers and a mustard-yellow hoodie dress printed with the words Always be yourself. Unless you can be a unicorn. Then always be a unicorn. I was one of the tamer dressers at Fern Grove, actually. I inspected my outfit in the window. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the fabric pulling tight over my chest and waist like that, but I didn’t have any choice. Mom was wide-hipped and curvy, too. I pulled the hood up over my head and scowled at my reflection.

  “Acadia!”

  Mom was waving to me from across the street, where Josh was loading his cello into the back seat of the Honda. There was barely room for all three of us plus the instrument. But I knew we couldn’t afford a bigger car.

  Josh folded himself in under the cello in the back, and I climbed into the passenger seat, trying not to think about what this car had so recently rolled over. What I had so recently rolled over.

  “How was your lesson?” I asked, twisting around to look at Josh.

  “Fine.”

  Josh had never been a kid of many words. In fact, up until someone put a cello in his hands, we were slightly worried about him. Once he started preschool, Mom and Dad noticed that he didn’t seem to take much interest in other kids, or in the things other kids liked—Play-Doh, make-believe, kicking a ball around. Or else he’d pick one activity and concentrate super hard on it, long past the time when other kids had gotten bored and drifted away.

  But it turned out he was just storing up all those words so they could come out of his fingertips when he drew a bow across the strings of his cello. He started lessons at five, and he was winning competitions in the Prep by his sixth birthday. At seven, he began competing regionally. Now, at ten, he was studying with Olga Menshikov, the best teacher in the Prep, playing repertoire usually assigned to sixteen-year-olds, and it was clear he was on a conservatory track.

  Mom’s full-time job was school, and her other full-time job was Josh.

  Which was fine by me. I had Dad, and we were a perfect pair.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When we got home, I sliced vegetables for a stir-fry, then curled up on the couch with my pocket edition of Much Ado About Nothing (a gift from Dad) and started reading from the beginning. The very beginning—page i, not page 1—the part with the introduction and preface and cast of characters. It was slow going.

  Dad came home a while later and dumped his satchel on the coffee table. I held up my book; he gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Veg is prepped,” I said.

  “Hallelujah!” He blew me a kiss, then breezed into the kitchen.

  I realized I’d been reading the same paragraph over and over for the last fifteen minutes. I sighed. Maybe I should skip the introduction stuff and just read the play.

  ACT I

  SCENE I. Before LEONATO’S house.

  Enter LEONATO, governor of Messina, HERO his daughter, and BEATRICE his niece, with a MESSENGER.

  LEONATO

  I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina.

  MESSENGER

  He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.

  I jumped when Dad’s phone
rang inside his satchel. His ringtone was the opening notes to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Dum-dum-dum-dummmmm. Dum-dum-dum-dummmmm.

  “Dad!” I yelled without moving. “Your phone!”

  Pans rattled in the kitchen. He came in, fished his phone out of the satchel, and looked at the number, then lifted an eyebrow and took it back to the kitchen before answering. I heard the buzz of his voice faintly, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was feeling too lazy to follow him and eavesdrop.

  Twenty minutes later, my stomach rumbled. I yawned, stuck a bookmark in Much Ado, and wandered into the kitchen to see if dinner was ever going to happen.

  The vegetables I’d sliced were sitting on the cutting board untouched. Dad was leaning against the counter, still talking quietly on the phone. He said, “If Elizabeth is ready, then we are.”

  He noticed me and waved an arm, shooing me away.

  Huh?

  I wondered who Dad was talking to. He isn’t really a phone guy. No matter who’s on the other end, he finishes calls after just a few minutes. He’s good at making up excuses, like, “What’s that smell? Oh, dinner’s burning!” Or once, with Awful Aunt Marge, “What’s that smell? Oh, the outhouse is overflowing!” (Awful Aunt Marge, who thinks we’re “a bunch of dirty hippies,” did not call him again for a long time.) He says he misses the days of letter writing and express carrier pigeon, that the communication center of his brain doesn’t work as well in real time.

  I, however, living in the twenty-first century, went upstairs to my room, dug into my backpack, and grabbed my own phone to call Raven. I was grumpy and hungry and Dad was being weird and secretive. Plus Raven and I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk after school, with me rushing off to art club, and I still hadn’t told her about my horrendous first driving lesson.

  “Hey,” I said, when she answered. “You’re going to think I’m a terrible person and I hope you don’t hate me forever because I think I’m going to hate myself forever already.”

  “Uhhh,” she said. “Okay?”

  I told her what had happened, all the gory details. “They never found a microchip, it was a stray. Someone from Animal Control called and told us. Is that worse? It never even had a loving home!”

  “Tragic,” Raven agreed.

  “I feel like my soul will never be clean again,” I said.

  “You don’t believe in souls,” she pointed out.

  “But it’s like I’ve been marked. ‘Cat-killer.’ And I love cats.”

  “Well, I guess you could spend the best years of your prime caring for stray cats,” she said. “Wearing cat-lady clothes. That seems like a fitting punishment.”

  “My prime? When’s that?”

  “Probably right now,” she admitted.

  “Ugh, I hope this isn’t my prime. I think you have to know how to drive a car without murdering innocent animals to be considered ‘in your prime.’”

  “Stop saying murder, Cadie. You’re being melodramatic.”

  “I know, but I’m so good at it.”

  “You are. Also, it was an accident. You have to stop beating yourself up about it. You’re going to get back on the horse, right?”

  “Horses, sure. Behind the wheel, nope. Never.”

  “Never is a long time to be walking everywhere.”

  “Then I’ll have great legs.”

  “While you’re running around looking for stray cats to feed? With no Farhan to appreciate them?”

  “Raven!”

  “That reminds me,” she said. “The Fall Ball is in a month. Are you going to ask him to go with you?”

  I squeaked. “Me ask him? That would require bravery. Lots of it.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m going to ask Max.”

  “You and Max have been dating all summer! That doesn’t count. The me-and-Farhan thing is way more complicated. Since there is no me-and-Farhan thing.” But now I was grinning. Raven always managed to cheer me up, sooner or later.

  Then Josh knocked on my door and told me that Mom and Dad needed us to come downstairs.

  Mom, sitting tight-lipped and red-eyed on the living room couch. Dad, looking sick, perched on the edge of the piano bench. I noticed right away that he was sitting as far from Mom as possible.

  “Acadia, Joshua,” she said. “Your father has something to tell you.”

  “Okay … ,” I said. “What’s going on? Dad?” I heard my voice rising. “Is everyone all right?”

  Josh stood next to me, saying nothing.

  “Just have a seat,” Dad said. In a voice I’d never heard him use before. Thinner than Weatherman, sadder than Shakespearean Tragic.

  Josh and I sat, squished together on the ottoman.

  “Kids …” Dad crossed then uncrossed his legs, smoothed his hands down his pants. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  Mom bit her lip and clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles started turning white. “Oh, that’s an understatement,” she muttered.

  “Melissa, please.” Dad paused. “Are you sure you don’t want to—process this some more, before we tell them?”

  Mom just glared at him, and he sighed. “Kids,” he said again, and I pinpointed it. The voice. Not a Voice at all, I mean. Just a voice, lowercase v. Dad never talked like that. Only normal people talked like that. Everyone else.

  “Get to the point, Ross,” Mom hissed. I’d never seen her this upset, either. Not even when Josh fell off the back porch and we thought his arm was broken.

  “Kids,” Dad said a third time. “You have—a sister.”

  I gasped. “Mom’s having a baby?”

  Mom glared at Dad. “Wouldn’t that be the simple way. Nice and easy. But no, your father went and took care of that without—”

  “Melissa, I’ll explain.”

  “Well then, get to the point already, because I, for one, am getting tired of sitting here listening to you fumble.” Mom was practically spitting.

  Dad shifted on the piano bench, stood, clasped his hands behind his head. Turned to look out the window, and addressed his next words to the street. “It turns out you have a half sister.” He paused again.

  “I don’t understand,” I ventured, when it felt like the silence had grown thick enough that a hatchet wouldn’t make a dent.

  Mom swore, and I felt Josh stiffen next to me. “Ross found out he has another daughter,” she snapped. “Somewhere in Ohio, of all places. And apparently this woman—the mother—has finally gotten around to letting him know. If she’s even telling the truth.” She muttered something else in Spanish that made Dad’s eyebrows jump.

  Okay, Mom occasionally swore, but she hardly ever swore in Spanish—only when she had exhausted the level of fury she could convey in English. And she always referred to him as “Dad” in front of us, not “Ross,” unless she had forgotten we were in the room. Which was odd, because she was still addressing us. Not Dad.

  “Melissa,” Dad started, “I have no reason to believe she’s lying. And can you please try not to—not in front of the kids—”

  “Not to what?” Mom shouted, her eyes narrowed. “Not to what, Ross?”

  Dad sighed. “Are we done here?” he asked, so quietly I barely heard him.

  “Are we done here, he wants to know,” Mom reported, staring at a point somewhere just over my head. “As if we could file this one away in a neat little ‘Completed’ folder and move on now.”

  I stood up. “Dad. What’s she talking about?”

  He turned and looked at me, then Josh. “It’s true. I’m so sorry—I know this is tough to understand. When you’re older—”

  “Not when they’re older, Ross, right now!” Mom finally turned her gaze to Dad. “This is going to affect them right now. This is affecting our family right now, you selfish asshole.” And to my horror, Mom burst into tears.

  Dad’s face crumpled. He moved toward her, but Mom stood up and slapped him, hard, across the face. Then she turned and walked out the front door.

  Dad went upstairs and didn’t come
back down, so I finally ordered dinner in for me and Josh.

  “I know what it means,” Josh said when I tried to explain it to him over the kung pao shrimp (nonvegetarian rebel food) that neither of us were hungry enough to eat. “I’m not a baby.”

  Then he stomped up to his room, slammed the door, and turned on a Shostakovich symphony at top volume. You know, normal ten-year-old boy music. I wasn’t sure if he really did understand, but I didn’t feel like talking about it, either.

  After Josh went upstairs, though, Dad came back down and sat on the couch across from me while I wordlessly pushed shrimp around with chopsticks. He didn’t even notice that it wasn’t tofu. Then he told me more details.

  She was the same age as me. A few months older, in fact.

  “Your mother and I were so young,” he said, still in that thin, sad voice that made him sound like someone else. “Things were rocky that first year we were married. And it was different then—when we were living at Ahimsa House. In theory, it was okay for us to—but I wasn’t honest about it with your mother, that was the problem. I mean, clearly, there was more than one problem.”

  “Too much information,” I muttered.

  Dad sighed. “Cadie, I’m not denying it. I screwed up. Big-time.”

  I had no idea what to say to that.

  Oh, and her name was Elizabeth Marie.

  Elizabeth Marie?

  No one in my family had a name like that. Ross Greenfield, Melissa Laredo-Levy. Colorful names. Names steeped in history, in stories. Elizabeth Marie? How much preppier can you get? Not like Acadia Rose, or Joshua Tree. Those names say, “Hi, I was conceived in a national park by free-spirited parents who lived with seventeen other people in an intentional community.” Otherwise known as a giant purple house in Takoma Park with a composting toilet out back and a telescope on the roof. Back before my mother went MIA—excuse me, became Dr. Laredo-Levy, Head of School at Fern Grove Friends School—and my father went ABD (all but dissertation) and decided to “fritter away his talent” (Mom’s words, of course) selling used books.